Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster. Just looking for opinions/rules with regards to the Independent Targeting talent (which allows a person wielding two guns to point them at two targets more than 10 metres away from each other); particularly with regards to the Cleric ranks.

Rank 8 Clerics have access to the talent regardless of path (Hierophant or Redemptionist); however, only the Hierophant path has access to Two Weapon Wielder (Ballistic) at rank 6. Also limited to that path is Ambidextrous at rank 7, and Hierophant itself also has access to Gunslinger and Dual Shot. So to me, there seems to be little point in Redemptionist suddenly having access to a somewhat useful dual-pistol talent when they don't get to use any of the four "essential" dual-pistol talents.

The only thing nagging at me about the presence of Independent Targeting in that tree is a line from the errata:

"The Independent Targeting talent allows two ranged weapons to be wielded and aimed at targets farther apart than 10 metres."

Does that thing about wielding imply that Independent Targeting also grants the effects of Two Weapon Wielder (Ballistic)? The only reason I'm considering this possibility is that there is nothing stopping a Cleric from wielding two pistols before this, and there's no justifiable reason I can see for this talent to even be in the Redemptionist tree otherwise. Any opinions? Official rulings you may have locked away in the archives?

Yazstromo said:

I can't remember, does Independent targeting have the requirement of Two Weapon Wielder (Ballistic)?

If not then I see no reason to restrict it. I would make sure to take into account the penalties involved for not having Two Weapon Wielder (Ballistic).

The only req is BS 40

Really there's nothing stopping anybody from wielding and firing two weapons in the same round, the only difference is the measure 'ability' to do so (BS and associated modifiers both negative and positive for doing so)

The real benefit a redemptionist can get from this is when dual wielding say inferno pistols (or any flame pistol) to have a greater arc of fire and where they need not be as accurate with the weapons (flame based attacks being based on the defenders agi instead of the attackers bs)

Dual-wielding hand flamers! Of course! Why did that never occur to me? The Redemptionist path is all about purging the unclean in holy flame!

Taking that into consideration, it does make sense why the talent might be in that path at all, even if for a very select set of circumstances. Thanks for helping make sense of that.

There is a school of thought that argue that any penalties to BS should transfer to a bonus to the Agility tests to avoid damage from flamers.

This is supported by the Rules As Written (RAW) where it points out (in the Errata) that operating a Flamer without the relevant Weapons Training Talents (which usually incurs a -20 to your BS test) give your targets a +20 bonus to their Agility test to avoid damage.

While the errata only specifies lacking talent or bracing a heavy flamer, other discussions have argued that the same method should apply to other bonuses.

For example, ambushing your enemies and catching them by Surprise give shooters a +30 to their Attack. Should Surprise not also give a bonus of some sort to attackers using Flamers? But a +30 to BS does not help flamers, so the only way to do this is to translate the Bonus into a -30 penalty to the targets Ag test (similar to how Cleanse and Purify works).

So by that line of reasoning, lacking the relevant talents result in a BS penalty, which for flamers translate into a Ag bonus for targets.

Dual wielding flamers without Two-Weapon Wielder, Ambidextrous and other relevant Talents result in a -40 and -20 penalty to BS for your main and off-hand respectively. This would translate to +20 and +20 Bonus to Ag, which could be reduced by Cleanse And Purify to +20/0. Still useful, I suppose.

Remember that you can only fire pistols at the same time, if you are wielding a basic weapon and a pistol, you gotta fire them separately. This is said somewhere in core rules/errata. There's nothing wrong with gunslinger, the pistol flame weapons are an obvious choice for the non-ranged fighter concentrated path on cleric.

PnPgamer said:

I'm not finding any mention of this in the book or errata..I recount reading that basic weapons can be held and fired one handed at a penalty (for some reason -20 comes to mind but I don't have the book infront of me at the moment) and the errata only states that you may "Use a full round action to make a single attack with each weapon."

Let me know if you find the section that talks about this in more detail

(I'm currently allowing a player to DW shotguns with extra grips and fire them accordingly, this could mess up his day lol)

It's in the description of Semi and Full Auto Fire on p 190 and 191.

" If you have a pistol in either hand you may fire them both (see Two-Weapon Fighting on page 197)"

Sorry I wasn't able to answer, but exactly what darth smeg said.